The Scouting Report: Cavs-Pacers, Game 2

Victor Oladipo was the star of the series in Game 1. Above all else, that has to change for the Cavaliers. And a great deal of the responsibility to change that falls on LeBron James (also Kevin Love, but more on that below).

Guarding Oladipo

A lot of the things that the Cavs need to do against Oladipo in Game 2 are things that they tried to do in Game 1. First of all, they need to take the ball out of his hands, especially in the pick and roll, or at least make things more difficult. And early on, they did.

Here’s Oladipo’s first pick and roll, which the Cavs did an excellent job on. It also helped that the Pacers didn’t set the screen very high.

Shortly after this play, the Pacers started setting their ball screens out higher, giving Oladipo more of a runway. Still, the Cavs simply didn’t continue this level of execution. And as the game wore on, their habits simply caught up with them.

It’s pretty clear that when a big man is setting a screen on Oladipo, the Cavs want to get it out of his hands by hedging or trapping up high. One idea could be trapping up higher and creating a 4-on-3 situation, but that’s a lot to ask from Kevin Love, who has improved defensively but is no Chris Bosh.

And when it’s a guard setting the screen, they will often switch. Or, with the Cavs that’s the idea, anyway. Here, Jose Calderon just messes the switch up by cheating over one step too far. He’s getting in position as if he’s going to hedge, but then realizes he’s supposed to switch.

For example, we have another play where Kevin Love is basically in no-man’s land on the pick and roll. His help from the weak side also doesn’t come because Rodney Hood has to respect the Bogdanovic’s shooting threat. Love has to step up high to defend against Oladipo’s pull up 3, but he’s unable to push him back to the strongside where he has help (hi, LeBron).

If Love could turn his hips just some, or know he has help from LeBron in the middle, maybe it doesn’t end in a layup. And finally, we have one disastrous masterpiece of the night. In true Keeping Up With The Kavs fashion, it ends in finger pointing.

The job on Oladipo in the halfcourt is going to be a total team effort. As this last play shows, all the pieces matter. LeBron cheating over but ultimately walking to his responsibility hurt. Love misreading that hurt even more. And when those mistakes compound on top of each other, it’s almost impossible to get over them.

The other aspect where they must be better at containing Oladipo is transition. They have to do a better job of slowing him, which is tough, because he’s an absolute maniac in the open floor.

But once again, we see here that this is a breakdown of more than one guy. Nance is too slow to get back, LeBron just doesn’t cover him so that there’s somebody around the basket and Green is unable to cut him off. No communication, no having each other’s back, no defense.

It’s a breakdown on all levels. The Cavs have been a bad defensive basketball team all season, but they’ve talked all season about being able to turn it up when it counts. It counts now and they need someone to set the tone. And there’s only one player who can do that. Well, maybe two.

Play The Hits

It took LeBron 10 minutes of action to attack the rim. The Cavs, who had the best offense in the league since Kevin Love came back on March 19, had the worst offensive performance of the opening weekend of the NBA playoffs, according to Synergy Sports.

For most of the first quarter, James was completely fine quarterbacking the offense like Tom Brady, spreading the love around and letting them do the work. Unfortunately, the NBA playoffs often don’t work like that. The battle with Lance Stephenson woke him up offensively but some of the defensive woes above persisted.

Kevin Love has to be more aggressive offensively. And the Cavs cannot conflate going for the homerun play with being aggressive. Love got an early turnover going for a home run play by trying to throw the ball to LeBron while triple teamed. George Hill went for a ‘bring-down-the-house’ alley-oop early that led to a turnover.

LeBron is likely the most gifted athlete we’ve ever seen, but we’re playing basketball here. There’s no reason to make this unnecessarily complicated. Play the hits. Get LeBron and Love working together in the pick and roll.

In a total of 28 pick and rolls recorded by Synergy, including pass outs, the Cavs ran a total of three LeBron-Love pick and rolls! Three! They averaged a point per possession on those plays, compared to 0.857 overall, among the bottom third of all playoff teams.

Ty Lue did a lot of interesting things, using guards to set more screens for LeBron up high to create movement. It got them moving fast and often led to some good looks. This one with Hood was a good play.

They need Hood, Clarkson, Nance and Hill all to play better in Game 2. But the Cavs didn’t get here on on LeBron-Hood pick and rolls, either. Love and LeBron, together, have to be the ones to lift the Cavs up if they want to avoid being down 0-2 heading to Indiana.

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